André Marie Ampère
(1775 - 1836)

André-Marie Ampère was born born on 20 Jan 1775 in Lyon, France. It has been
claimed that Ampère had mastered all known mathematics by the age of twelve years
but this seems somewhat of an exaggeration since, by Ampère's own account, he did
not start to read elementary mathematics books until he was 13 years old.

After taking a few lessons in the differential and integral
calculus from a monk in Lyon, Ampère began to study works by Euler and Bernoulli.
He then acquired a copy of the 1788 edition of Lagrange's Mécanique analytique
and began serious study of the work. However his life was soon to be shattered.
The French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille on 14 July
1789 but the effect on the Poleymieux region was not very great at first.
Ampère's father kept out of trouble until late in 1791 when he accepted
the position of Justice of the Peace in Lyon.

The city of Lyon refused to carry out instructions from Paris and the city was
besieged for two months. On the fall of the city Ampère's father was arrested
for issuing an arrest warrant for the Jacobin Chevalier who had then been put to
death. While Ampère moved to Bourg where he taught physics and chemistry
but his research was in mathematics. This research resulted in him composing a treatise
on probability, The Mathematical Theory of Games, which he submitted to the Paris
Academy in 1803. Laplace noticed an error, explaining the error to Ampère
in a letter, which Ampère was able to correct and the treatise was reprinted.

Appointed professor of mathematics at the Ecole Polytechnique in 1809
he held posts there until 1828. Ampère was appointed to a chair at Université
de France in 1826 which he held until his death. In Paris Ampère worked on a wide
variety of topics. Although a mathematics professor, his interests included, in
addition to mathematics, metaphysics, physics and chemistry. In mathematics he worked
on partial differential equations, producing a classification which he presented
to the Institut National des Sciences in 1814 to which he was admitted November
of the same year.

Ampère was also making significant contributions to chemistry. In 1811
he suggested that an anhydrous acid prepared two years earlier was a compound of
hydrogen with an unknown element, analogous to chlorine, for which he suggested
the name fluorine. Ampère also worked on the theory of light, publishing on refraction
of light in 1815. By 1816 he was a strong advocate of a wave theory
of light, agreeing with Fresnel and opposed to Biot and Laplace
who advocated a corpuscular theory. In the early 1820's, Ampère attempted
to give a combined theory of electricity and magnetism after hearing about experimental
results by the Danish physicist Hans Christian Orsted.
Ampère formulated a circuit force law and treated magnetism by postulating
small closed circuits inside the magnetized substance.

Another scientist working on magnetism at this time was Poisson who insisted
on treating magnetism without any reference to electricity. Poisson had already
written two important memoirs on electricity and he published two on magnetism in
1826.

Ampère's most important publication on electricity and magnetism was also
published in 1826. Ampère's theory became fundamental for 19th
century developments in electricity and magnetism. Faraday discovered electromagnetic
induction in 1831 and, after initially believing that he had himself discovered
the effect in 1822, Ampère agreed that full credit for the discovery
should go to Faraday. Weber also developed
Ampère's ideas as did Thomson and Maxwell.

In 1826 Ampère began to teach at the Collège de France. He was there in
a position to teach courses of his own instead of topics set for him as was the
case at Ecole Polytechnique. Ampère thus taught electrodynamics and this
course was taken by Liouville in 1826-27. Liouville made an
important contribution to Ampère's electrodynamics course by editing a set
of notes taken from Ampère's lectures.